Five reasons why Amazon Game Studios, which released "New World," has struggled until now

This is Nakauchi from the Technical Sales Department

"New World" has finally been released!
Originally scheduled for release in May 2020, it was delayed four times before finally being released on September 28, 2021!

Apparently, the number of simultaneous connections exceeded 700,000 on the first day. It's going well!

What is New World?

This MMORPG is a one-time purchase, not a subscription service.
However, it does not support Japanese, and the servers are not located in Asia.
Therefore, connection times may be long due to the distance.
The game engine is their own Lumberyard engine
As a side note, Lumberyard will be renamed "Open 3D Engine" and made open source.

Amazon Game Studios continues to struggle

However, I think everyone knows that Amazon Game Studios has struggled since it was founded in 2012

Christoph Hartmann, the current Vice President of Amazon Game Studios, has acknowledged past failures.
I'm not just saying this on my own.

Reasons for the struggle

1. The person in charge has no experience with games

Mike Frazzini, the person in charge, took charge when Amazon Game Studios was launched, but
at that time, Frazzini had no prior experience in games and had previously been a manager in the book business before becoming the head of the game business.
So why was someone with no experience like Frazzini put in charge? It seems that
Amazon's common practice is that "if you can run one business, you can run another business," and that's how he was placed.

2. The big names we brought in are leaving one after another

Kim Swift (designer of puzzle game portal),
Clint Hocking (director of Far Cry 2),
Richard Hillman (Madden expert),
Mark Witten (former head of Xbox Live)

There's no one here anymore

3. The problem of excessive costs

Amazon reportedly invests $500 million annually in its gaming division.
That's about 55 billion yen. Typical Amazon!

4. Development titles are being shelved or discontinued one after another

Crucible　
was released in May 2020 (service ended after 5 months). It was
Amazon's first title and a free-to-play online competitive game.

The "Lord of the Rings" MMORPG
project has been shelved due to disagreements over terms with Tencent.

Breakaway
was discontinued because it did not reach the expected quality.

5. Amazon's culture isn't conducive to game development

A former employee alleges
, "The company operates on a data-driven basis, and employees were required to create six-page documents to approve major decisions."

"The game engine required developers to develop using their own engine, Lumberyard, rather than Unreal Engine or Unity. As a result, some features required complex commands, making the system extremely slow, and developers had to play games or watch Amazon Prime Video while waiting for Lumberyard to process art or compile code."

"There was a whisper internally that Lumberyard was ruining Amazon Game Studios."

However, the world-famous Amazon is not going to let it end like this!

Amazon possesses enormous capital and owns AWS, the world's largest infrastructure.
Furthermore, they will be launching the Korean MMORPG "Lost Ark" in North America and Europe in 2022.
Given Amazon's success in areas like e-commerce, cloud computing, and streaming, even as a latecomer, it seems likely that they will also succeed in the gaming industry in the not-too-distant future.

Reference sites:
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2021-09-22-amazon-games-christoph-hartmann-eventually-well-be-judged-by-our-successes
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-01-29/amazon-game-studios-struggles-to-find-a-hit
https://www.bloombergquint.com/business/amazon-drops-company-policies-on-game-development-after-backlash